Last weekend I finally managed to take part in a gravel- and off-road driving training course, something I already wanted to do before I rolled my first Landrover. Two women from the Afrikaans course joined the party. The training is provided by a German couple on a farm near Solitaire, almost in the Namib desert. To get there you have to drive 250km from Windhoek - mostly on gravel road, so you have already done some training before arrival. I was glad about the airconditioning in the car because it was very hot - summer in the desert. We started with 2h of theory and the most important thing I kept in mind from that is: YES, you should brake when the car becomes unstable. So far many people told me this was what I had done wrong during my accident: I put my foot on the brakes. Another useful thing to know was that one should not look at any obstacle on the road, but rather at the way around it. The practical training was exhausting, of course more for the nerves than for the body. We started with driving at low speed around some cones and then gradually increasing the speed until the car started to slide. This was a horrible feeling, but after a while I found out that even then it is possible to gain control again (within limits) if you react calmly in the right way. The next exercise was to brake fully while steering the car around a wall of cones. Yes, ABS makes it possible, although in this case only at speed up to 70km/h. Then we tried driving bends and our trainer asked me whether I want to become a ralley driver. No intention at all, thanks. I think our tyres lost a bit of rubber during these lessons.
The second part was off-road driving, to find out what the car can do and where the limits are. Now both of us (my car and myself) know what is possible. I would never have dared to try all these things, the worst of which was driving along a slope with the sky in one side window and the earth right in front of the other one - at least it seemed so. We also drove diagonally through ditches and up steep hills. The highlight at the end was a drive up a solitary hill from where we had a great view down to the dunes. Then we drove back to camp through a dry riverbed, trying not to get stuck in the sand.
The evenings we passed enjoyable with BBQ and chatting.
